There was no poster, no campaign, no plan.
When “Niu Lai”, a Chinese animated film about a calf, started taking off at the box office, dozens of cinemas realized they didn’t have a single official poster to hang in the lobby.
The film was made on such a tiny budget that there was barely even a promotional image, painted in a traditional Chinese style. So the cinema employees themselves grabbed brushes and poster board and began drawing their own versions 🎨🐄
The result was as clumsy as it was endearing, and ended up being the best publicity possible: people shared photos of those homemade posters while the film grossed more than 4 million dollars and slipped in just behind “Spider-Man: Brand New Day”, a sequel with a 225 million budget.
A producer from Shanghai summed it up well: this kind of phenomenon can’t be manufactured on purpose. All because of a hand-drawn cow.